President Sergio Osmeña’s State of the Nation Address - Part 7

This State of the Nation Address was delivered on June 9, 1945 when the country was about to rise from the damage of World War II. This speech should be integrated in our school curriculum so the youth will understand our war history.

“Soon after, on the initiative of President Quezon, steps were taken to obtain congressional sanction for these pledges. If President Quezon did nothing but this in his political career — and his political record can hardly be surpassed — it alone would entitle him to the eternal gratitude of his people. Senate Joint Resolution No. 93, which President Quezon and I asked for and accepted, is the culmination of our joint congressional efforts. This legislation authorizes the President of the United States to advance the date of independence provided in the Independence Law. It also provides, through the maintenance by the United States of bases in the Philippines, “for full security for the Philippines, for the mutual protection of the Islands and the United States, and for the future maintenance of peace in the Pacific.”

“So that the import of this new legislation, and the responsibility which we Filipinos have assumed thereby, may be better understood, it is necessary that we review past events even if we have to walk again on well-trodden paths.

“National independence was the goal which our revolutionaries of 1896 and 1898 set for themselves. When the fortunes of war were adverse to our arms and American sovereignty was established in 1898, individual liberties were recognized, among them the right of free assembly. Under the protection of this freedom, two political groups came into existence: the Federalistas, who declared themselves in favor of the annexation of the Philippines to the United States so as to constitute, in due time, a state of the Union; and the Nacionalistas, who advocated the ideal of independence which the Filipino revolutionaries had proclaimed but were not able to achieve in war.

“The aspiration to be free, nurtured in an atmosphere of peace, was received with sympathy in the United States. The legitimacy of this aspiration was recognized by Dr. Jacob G. Schurman, President of the first American Commission sent by President McKinley to the Philippines, in these memorable words:

“The watchword of progress, the key to the future of the political development of the archipelago, is neither colonialism nor federalism, but nationalism. The destiny of the Philippine Islands is not to be a State or territory in the United States of America, but a daughter republic of ours—a new birth of liberty on the, other side of the Pacific, which shall animate and energize those lovely islands of the tropical seas, and, rearing its head aloft, stand as a monument of progress and a beacon of hope to all the oppressed and benighted millions of the Asiatic continent.”

“On their part the Filipino people, who had elected a majority of Nacionalistas to the first Philippine Assembly, which met in 1907, repeatedly reiterated their confidence in them in successive elections, until the Congress approved in 1934 the Tydings-McDuffie Act creating the present Commonwealth. This law was accepted, first by the Legislature and then directly by the people, thus binding America and the Philippines to a virtual covenant by which the United States formally committed itself to withdraw its sovereignty from the Philippines and proclaim our independence on July 4, 1946. The ten-year transition period was not established to delay the proclamation of independence, but only to prepare the Philippines adequately for the responsibilities of nationhood.” (To be continued)